480 HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY
Mr. Grider is a member of the Masonic, Knights of Pythias and Red
Men fraternities, and is a worthy member of the United Brethren church.
Mr. O’Connor, the father of Mrs. Grider, served four years and
eight months in the Civil war, a member of the Thirty-first Indiana Vol-
unteer Infantry, and he was in service in Texas after the close of the
conflict, He was wounded in battle, participated in the famous march of
Sherman to the sea, and was discharged with the rank of a corporal.
Rev. JOHN NEAL.—Prominent among the pioneer preachers of Clay
county was the late Rev. John Neal, for many years an honored and
esteemed resident of Lewis township. He was a man of earnest convic-
tions, strong character, and deep consecration, bound heart and soul to the
religious work in which he was engaged, and as a loyal and faithful min-
ister of the Christian church was very successful in reaching the hearts
of his hearers. To him, perhaps, may aptly he applied the poet’s couplet
regarding the village pastor of ancient Auburn:
“Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
And fools who came to scoff, remained to pray.”
A son of Henry Neal, he was born in Miami county, Ohio, in 1816,
coming from Welsh-Irish ancestry. Henry Neal was one of the early
settlers of Miami county, and there spent the larger part of his active
life, being engaged in agricultural pursuits. The maiden name of his
wife was Mary Duncan. She was three times married, Mr. Neal being
her second husband. A more extended sketch of her life may be found
on another page of this volume, in connection with the sketch of Benja-
min Coppock, the only child born of her third marriage. Henry Neal and
his wife were both Quakers, and reared their children in that faith.
Coming from Ohio to Indiana in 1835, Rev. John Neal became a
pioneer of Lewis township, living first in a log cabin on section ten, shar-
ing it with his brother-in-law, and his family. Subsequently purchasing
government land in section twcnty-one, he erected a log house, which was
the family home for many years, and the birthplace of nearly all of his
children. Being converted in his youth, John Neal joined the United
Brethren Church, but later transferred his allegiance to the Christian
Church, and soon after settling in Lewis township became an ordained
preacher. For many years thereafter he devoted the most of his time
to the spread of the gospel, not only in Clay county, but in the neighbor-
ing counties, making the rounds on horseback and preaching more often
in the log cabin homes of the pioneers than in a church edifice. It is
hardly necessary to say that the salary of the itinerant in those days was
by no means a munificent one, being never a stated sum, and he was often
paid in the productions of the land rather than in cash, all realizing that
the minister and his family must live, and ready money being a scarce
article, In his religious capacity, Mr. Neal contributed his full share
towards the intellectual and moral progress of this part of the state, and
until his death, January 29, 1897, at the venerable age of eighty-one years,
was deeply interested in everything pertaining to the welfare of town
and county.
Mr. Neal married Elizabeth Love, who was born in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, a daughter of James and Barbara (Hastings) Love, both
natives of Ireland. Both parents came to America from the Emerald